when the news reel reeks

Little boy in a red sweater, dead, face down on a beach. A girl of two and her father murdered in the mountains by a shy quiet man in a shy quiet town in the shadow of the Rockies. It’s not a bright week; the news reel reeks. I post something on Facebook about Syrian refugees and Christ and the call to compassion. I get a hateful rant from a well meaning man who is angry about the senseless pain in the world and decides to blame all form of religion. Tells me to “grow some balls” which I find…odd.

And closer to home, on a tedious note, a volatile email thread has flung itself at me: spun out of control with bolds and capped letters and swearing and he-said-she-said – what?! Why? Why be so ugly? I respond: cool articulate and patronizing.

In the background I hear Nora vaguely trying to get my attention: Mom, I have a magic trick…

Embroiled in this over dinner served late and behind on work and Fellow comes in tired from serving and protecting and Nora is huddled over her mathematics asking why why why doesn’t it all add up…?

I tap my computer shut and say, “I believe I am making things worse.”

Fellow cups his huge warm hand over mine, “There’s a little girl who could use your time.”

And he’s right. She’s slumped on the sofa, her figures exhausted, her tummy full of the squash she pretended to like to eat because she knows I’m sensitive about my cooking.

“Honey, would you be so good as to pull out that magic again?”

She leaps up and artfully, if not discretely, separates two sheets of Kleenex from each other behind her back, creating an AMAZING DUPLICATION before our VERY EYES! And then she throws a pencil into a doubled bag and VOILA! Where did it COME FROM?! MAGIC!

I hug her dear. The magic is in the making. The magic is so near and for the taking.

I tuck her in and think of the dead children this week and give her an extra long squeeze. I hear her heart beat. Her lungs breathing air. Blood pumping through her veins. It’s all so fragile and miraculous. I can’t think about it too long, all the possibilities of something going wrong. Flit. Fleeting fly. Rain falls from the sky. It disturbs me to think I might be more thankful for the rain because of the drought.